On the cusp

Photo: Beach at Charmouth cusps, Derek Harper 

Imagining the world beneath your feet

I was there precisely on the cusp of the seasons. The year was turning beneath my feet, beneath the boat I sat in. The wet season was ending, the dry season beginning. For the herbivores, the time of plenty was ending; for the carnivores, the time of plenty was about to begin. (Simon Barnes in the Luangwa Valley, Zambia, How to be wild)

Jesus has been described as a metaphorical theologian*. He introduced metaphors as if they were houses whose windows we are invited to sit at and look out from, view the world, our lives and/or God from. The metaphors of 'on the cusp of seasons' and of a 'year turning beneath my feet' is such rich language and causes me to recall when I thought my world turning beneath me; feet pulled out from under me or swept up and away, also of times of feeling on the brink, at the turn of a tide.

* Kenneth Bailey, Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes